Die Weltkarten / The World Maps

In daylight, Norbert Radermacher’s World Maps go largely unnoticed. At night, when they are well lit, they still require an attentive observer to be discovered at all. The work was created and donated to the city in 1991 in collaboration with the Kunstverein Bochum. The artist placed two drawings of the world map on two opposite rectangular fields along the bridge’s support structure. Light surfaces denote the continents, while the black background represents the oceans.
One of the maps shows the world as we are accustomed to seeing it: Europe is at the center of the image and the other continents are included on the sides. The second map moves the Pacific Ocean and East Asia to the center, so that Europe is all the way at the edge of the map. The sudden disorientation that this causes reveals how Eurocentric our worldview typically is. The two maps are lit by a street lamp that is extended upward into framework the railway bridge and draws the viewers gaze upward toward this unusual situation.
The installation doesn’t impose itself on passersby and they can walk past it without even noticing the artwork. However, those who do notice it not only discover the world in the form of two maps, but also experience something new about their own perception of it.

Further reading: Public Art Ruhr. Die Metropole Ruhr und die Kunst im öffentlichen Raum. Eds. Walter Smerling and Ferdinand Ulrich on behalf of the RuhrKunstMuseen, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-8632-134-0, pp. 144-145.